WARNING: These photos will get progressively more disturbing as you swipe.
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Yesterday I was driving through Southern California on my way to Ojai. Google Maps took me on a random detour, and I ended up on a dirt road in an area peppered by beatdown trailers and barking hellhounds behind chain link fencing. The dirt road itself was uninhabited and I couldn't see a soul for miles, so in keeping with my always-needing-to-pee nature I stopped to water the desert floor. That's when I saw it.
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First a spinal column. Then a ribcage. A skull (dog? maybe?). Then a random scattering of mandibles, a pelvis, ribs and stout leg bones from something bigger than my doggie friend. Some remains still reeking of death and rot, and some bleached, pristine, hollow. .
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I took some photos, grabbed a few bones, jumped back into my still-running car and started back down the dirt road. I made it twenty feet or so before something furry on the side of the road caught my eye. An old, dark brown rug? Nope! A rotting, shedding pelt. More scattered bones. Trash. And straight outta Lord Of The Flies, an upside down decapitated pig's head. .
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At this point I was starting to get nervous, my steps quicker and my awareness heightened. I backed out onto the road and looked over my shoulder. What the hell was that? Whatever it was it was big. Bigger than the pig's pelt, head -- and what I now assumed to be his ribcage -- put together. .
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It was a cow. A young cow, but a tremendous sunken-eyed, snouted, disemboweled-but-still-wearing-his-entire-hide display of impressive bovine majesty nonetheless. I'll let his photo do him the justice he so rightly deserves.
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And that's when I reached my saturation point, dear reader. Shit had just gone off-the-rails weird. Shaking from the adrenaline dump of a thousand killing field murder mysteries, I hustled my ass down the remainder of the dirt road toward pavement, and the comfort of road-weary strangers who had no idea what lurked just beyond the sagebrush.
